03: Sola Christo (Christ Alone)

Good afternoon, Church.

Hear now the word of the true and living God, Romans 5, starting in verse 12.

Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men, because all sinned.

For sin indeed was in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, who was a type of the one who was to come.

But the free gift is not like the trespass, for if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift by the grace of that one man Jesus Christ abounded for many.

And the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin.

For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

For if, because of one man's trespass, death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Therefore, as one trespass led to condemnation for all men, so one act of righteousness leads to justification in life for all men.

For as by the one man's disobedience the many were made sinners, so by the one man's obedience the many will be made righteous.

Now the law came to increase the trespass, but where sin increased, grace abounded all the more, so that as sin reigned in death, grace also might reign through righteousness, leading to eternal life through Jesus Christ our Lord.

This is the word of the Lord.

Please be seated.

Good afternoon.

Thanks for joining us.

My name is James Rathman.

I'm the pastor here at Redemption Church Denver.

We like to say that there are two ways to get connected here at Redemption Church.

We gather large and we gather small.

So on Sunday afternoons, we gather large here, and then throughout the week, we gather small and in each other's homes.

So what we call that gathering small, we call those redemption groups.

You may have heard them called small groups or community groups or gospel communities or missional communities or something like that.

These are totally different than any of those.

These are redemption groups.

So to join a redemption group, you can uh download our app and tap connect and fill that out.

Uh or you can talk with someone down in the lobby.

I believe today it is David Murjanov or Krista Copeland, and they'll be wearing a lanyard that says Redemption Church Denver on it, and they can help you get connected to a Redemption Group.

Those will be uh really kicking off again this fall.

So starting the week after Labor Day, is that right?

Uh September 8th, those will be uh starting again.

Uh so find a group that you can get connected with.

It's a great way to gain community in Denver, go deeper with people in the text that we're going over as we gather large.

And uh you can't do Christianity alone.

It's not the type of thing that you can do just academically, you can't do it, uh it's not a solo project.

You need other people in your life to really know God.

So, uh, gather large, gather small, another announcement.

Uh this is a goodbye announcement.

Uh we are saying goodbye to the live stream.

So all of you are not watching the live stream right now because you're here.

That's the number one way to tell.

Uh but what we're doing is uh we're getting we're getting rid of the live stream for a couple of reasons.

One, uh the whole sound system is getting redone in here by the Heights Church, who we rent this space from.

Uh and they are uh, and as we're sharing a soundboard and we're moving through these things, we haven't been able to get consistency with our live stream, and so it's been kind of challenging.

Uh secondly, uh we want to be reinforcing this reality that church is not just a podcast, it's not just information that you can have relayed to you.

The point is not just to gain information, but kind of like what Zach was saying when he was describing why it is that we read the creeds every week, the reason is because sharing in this worship together, being a part of a liturgy, which literally means an act of the people, being a part of that is something that truly forms us, that forms our hearts after the Lord.

So when we come and we sing together, when we recite the creeds together, even listening to a sermon sitting next to someone who's hearing the same thing is an act that really forms our hearts towards the Lord.

So we don't want to reinforce this concept that a sermon is just a religious TED talk that you can consume on your own time.

And we think that the live stream can can reinforce that.

So uh think of our getting rid of the live stream as a logistical necessity and an invitation to come to church.

So uh yeah, heads up, no more live stream next week.

Um so thank you, live stream, for all your service.

Thank you, YouTube.

Okay.

Uh so with those announcements, let's pray and get into our text.

Father, we pray that you would attend this time, that you would send your spirit to apply your word to our hearts, and that you would show us exactly what you have said in your word.

Nothing more, nothing less.

Lord, that we might see you and know you as you are.

Father, we lift this up in Jesus' name.

Amen.

To close out our summer, we're doing a six-week series on the five solas of the reformation.

So it's a series uh in where we're covering uh yeah, the five solas of the reformation.

So what are those?

Well, in the 1500s, in Western Europe, a revival took place as the scripture was translated into the common vernacular so that anyone could see it, and there was this real rediscovery of the fundamental tenets of the gospel.

And it's become typical in the centuries since then to sum up that revival, that rediscovery of the tenets of the gospel in five key statements.

And these have been called the five solas.

So sola is like an English way of saying the Latin sole, which means only.

So these five are uh sola scriptura, which we covered last week, which means scripture alone, sola fide, which means faith alone, sola gratia, which means grace alone, sola cristo, which means Christ alone, and solideo gloria.

So solo Christo, that's where we are this week.

Last week we covered sola scriptura.

Why is it that scripture alone is our authority for knowing God?

Scripture reigns supreme among all other sources of information for knowing the living God.

It is the way that he revealed himself to us.

And scripture tells the story of who Christ is.

So what we're looking at today is solo Christo, Christ alone.

So what that means is that we are saved by the work of Christ exclusively.

There is no other name under heaven by which we may call on and be saved.

But solo Christo doesn't just mean that Christ is a necessary ingredient or he's the necessary ingredient for our salvation, but it means that he is the sufficient ingredient for our salvation.

It is not just that Christ is minimally necessary, as though you have to have Christ, and then you'll need to add these other things as well.

It is that Christ is all of it.

To add anything to Jesus is only to take it away.

And often we treat Jesus as though he is, the way that I like to say it is he is part of this complete breakfast.

Like, like ego commercials.

They show at the end what makes this a complete breakfast, and it's you have your egos, but there's also like a glass of orange juice, three oranges, a banana, chocolate milk, and like all these other things.

Jesus is not a part of this complete breakfast.

He's the whole thing.

He's like an instant breakfast, which you stir.

Christ alone.

There's no other name.

So this doctrine was really vocalized in 1517 by Martin Luther.

And it was compressed out of a terribly painful experience in his own life.

So Martin Luther was a monk and he had committed his life to attaining his salvation by following most completely the religious practices that were prescribed to him.

And the way that the gospel was communicated at that time in church history was as a system of merits.

So you would earn merits by doing good works, and then you would lose merits by sinning.

And so what you would want to do is structure your life in such a way to earn as many merits as possible.

That way you would ensure less time in purgatory and you would ensure an ultimate salvation.

And so Martin Luther was crushed by this system, and the reason is because he took it so seriously.

He committed his life so completely to an absolute purity, an absolute humility before the Lord.

And yet it seemed to be never enough.

In a biography of Martin Luther called Here I Stand by this guy named Roland Bainton, it's like a biography, but to be honest, it's more just like a hero story.

Like if Martin Luther was actually like who the character is in this book, there's just no way.

But it's a really, really fun book.

If you want to read a really fun book about the Reformation, which you probably do, then I recommend Here I Stand by Roland Bayton.

And here's how he describes Luther's experience trying to gain merits to earn his salvation.

He says the acuteness of Luther's distress arose from his sensitivity at once to all the difficulties by which man has ever been beset.

For those who are troubled by particular sins, the church offers forgiveness through the penitential system.

But pardon is made contingent upon conditions which Luther found unattainable.

Now, for those too weak to meet the tests, there is the mystic way of ceasing to strive and of losing oneself in the abyss of the Godhead.

But Luther could not envisage God as an abyss hospitable to man the impure.

God is holy, majestic, devastating, consuming.

You see, what the system did is it did what we all do, what the normal trajectory of humans is to do when we hear the gospel.

We hear Jesus, Jesus covers our sin.

That's great.

So it's probably Jesus plus plus these other things that I can do.

And what the good news had been reduced to for Martin Luther was that Jesus acquired a lot of merits.

And the good news of Jesus is that he had merits left over, and he could distribute some of those to you so long as you meet these certain requirements.

If you sin, follow this particular penitential system.

And so it was Jesus plus something, and therefore the gospel was lost.

So it's easy to look at Martin Luther and say, dude, quit starving yourself, quit beating yourself, you're praying enough, you're doing fine, and think you just don't have this concept, but look, this is the normal drift of the human heart to look for something other than Jesus to justify ourselves before God.

And I'm gonna give you a pro tip to help you discover what those are in your life.

And they they are the things that that come after enough.

So if you do this enough or come right before enough.

So if you pray enough, then you will.

If if you make enough money, then you'll be justified.

If if you spend uh enough time confessing, if you spend enough time in community, if you finally get enough Christian friends that are supporting you, or if you finally get enough people to come to church with you, or if you finally get enough times going to church in a row, or if you do our reading plan in the app and you finally get enough in there, and and the the thing that's in the way of your enoughs are your if-onlies.

And that's if only you had enough time, then you would be able to get to it.

If only you weren't so uh afraid of this person's opinion, then you would be able to say what really needed to be said.

On the other side of those things, that's what you're really depending on for your salvation.

And if you're sensitive, like Martin Luther, if you're honest, you'll be crushed by those things.

There's no such thing as enough.

There is no if-only, if you know who God really is.

And what Martin Luther realized is who God really was.

God he couldn't even take the way of, you know what, I'm just going to stop judging myself, I'm going to step back from myself, and I'm going to, you know, dissolve into the abyss of the Godhead.

And Martin Luther would say, but but me dissolving into the abyss of the Godhead, God is holy.

He's majestic.

He's devastating in his justice.

Because Martin Luther had such a grasp of who God was and the glory of God, he became crushed by the system of merits.

And it wasn't because Martin Luther was wrong about who God was that he was crushed, it's because he was right.

The standard for being in God's presence is a standard of absolute perfection.

And there was no way, even when he had completely isolated himself into a commune, that he would be able to attain such a perfection.

If only we would reach the point of Martin Luther.

If only we would reach the breakdown that he did, where he said, I can't, I simply can't.

I can't attain to what God is calling me to.

Then we might have such a breakthrough as he had.

Where he discovered that it is, he did not discover some way, right, to get enough merits.

You can tell by what clickbait gets you.

I use this example all the time because it works on me.

You can tell what you're chasing by what clickbait works on you.

If I see clickbait that's like, here's five morning routines that changed my life, I'm clicking on it.

And then I'm going to read it and I'm going to feel guilty.

That's all that's gonna happen.

That's the whole maneuver.

But I'm so obsessed with this idea that getting my life in order is just a trick away.

It's just some little hack, or it's just a matter of strategy, or of lining these things up.

And to be honest, you know what that is?

That's extremely hopeful.

That's looking at the world and saying, maybe my problems that feel so deep and feel so rooted in my heart, maybe they're not that deep.

Maybe they're not that rooted.

Maybe I'm just a strategy, a technique, a tip, a trick away from getting those things in order.

I just haven't found the right plan yet.

And so we chase and we chase and we chase until we reach a moment of honesty like Martin Luther, where he says, maybe this whole system of merits is wrong?

What if the good news of the gospel is not the good news that we might be able to get some leftover merits from Jesus?

What if that isn't the story?

What if it's not a story of accumulated works?

What if it's a story of union, of identity?

What if it's a story of solidarity with God?

What if it's not a story of us breaking a threshold of our works?

What if it's a story of salvation?

And that's what he leads us to.

That's what gets exposed.

The simple, really good news that Jesus saves.

To understand this, we have to see, to make this switch of what the gospel really is from a system of merits to a story of salvation, we have to understand how bad things really are.

That means we have to understand the types of creatures that we are, the types of the type of thing that sin is, and then we'll understand what would it mean for someone to save us.

If we're this type of creature and sin is this type of thing, then what other type of thing would have to save us from that position?

And because we don't get that, because we think of it as just, I just slipped and fell short a little bit, so with a tip and a trick I'll be able to get myself back in, we miss it and we live condemned.

But when we get how bad things really are, and it's gonna be strange how bad they are, then we'll see how good of a salvation is really offered.

And why it is only Christ.

It is Christ alone.

That is the only thing that makes any sense at all for our salvation.

So we're going to explore this in the middle of Paul's letter to the Romans in chapter five, and it's the second half of chapter five.

So we're going to look at how Paul describes who we are and the type of thing sin is.

Uh, and he describes this through explaining Adam, the first man, type of thing he is.

And then the second point will be seeing Jesus and the type of thing that he is.

So let's begin.

Romans 5, verses 12 through 14 says, Therefore, just as sin came into the world through one man, and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

Romans 5:12–14

For sin was indeed in the world before the law was given, but sin is not counted where there is no law.

Yet death reigned from Adam to Moses, even over those who were s whose sinning was not like the transgression of Adam, and who was a type of the one who was to come.

Alright, that's very like Paul.

That's pretty dense.

So we're gonna take our time and we're gonna move through this slowly, but first I want to establish a principle for us.

So, um, have any of you done the 23andme thing?

Or Ancestry.com?

Great, this is gonna land.

Uh so everybody knows what it is, though, right?

Yeah.

No one knows what it is.

Okay.

Different analogy.

I'm just kidding.

I worked hard on this one, so you get it.

Uh so 23andme, cheek swab, mail it in, and don't do this if you're a murderer, by the way.

Because they'll catch you now.

Uh so uh say do a cheek swab, mail it in, and they send you back a report of your DNA, and it gives you your history, who you're connected to, what your genetic ancestry is.

And it's been real it's uh been kind of an amazing thing.

I read an article uh in the Atlantic about how the ancestry and 23andMe is they say it's removing the family secret uh because all of a sudden these family secrets are just being exposed by science.

But what's happening is technology is filling this void that's been left in our culture.

I can I can picture us in a different culture, and they'd they'd be like, hey, they have this test finally to uh show us what our ancestry is.

Like imagine being in uh yeah, like it being in David's kingdom in the Old Testament.

And be like, hey, great news, there's a test that shows us what our ancestry is.

And David would be like, well, why don't you just ask, why don't you just ask your family?

We know where we came from, we know what our ancestry is, we know who we are, who we're connected to, what our past is, but that's not the way our culture is.

We needed to invent a technology to retroactively tell us this thing that we've forgotten.

It's because the Enlightenment tells us that we're just individuals and that the world is centered around the individual who is atomized from their history, from their culture.

Modernism tells us that we don't arrive on the scene as these preloaded things with histories and that are part of a story.

It tells us that you're tabula rasa, you're a blank slate.

And so we're all just thrown out into the world as these sort of ahistorical beings that have no context, barely even our parents.

What are your great-grandparents' names?

I bet many don't know.

I don't know.

And so because we live in a culture like this, we can't think of ourselves in connection to a history, to a lineage, in a way that that would really matter, that that would say something about who we are.

But that's exactly where Paul is going when he's describing the type of thing that sin is and how we fit into this story.

So Paul moves way back in time.

He goes as far back in your family history and mine as can possibly be gone.

He goes back to the very first person who is Adam.

And he says that sin came into the world through one man.

Sin came into the world through Adam.

And because sin came into the world through Adam, death came into the world.

Therefore, everyone dies.

So sin comes into the world through Adam.

Now we all die.

And he uses this really strange sentence.

He says, Paul says that death spread to all men because all sinned.

So I'm going to read it in context actually, because this is kind of the words are kind of tough.

So just as sin came into the world through one man and death through sin, and so death spread to all men because all sinned.

So a typical way of understanding that is to say, okay, so Adam sinned, and then death comes into the world to everyone, to every person.

Why?

Well, because every person, in a similar manner to the way in which Adam sinned, has sinned themselves.

You know, Adam sinned, and so he died, but then his children, they also sinned, and so they died, and their children's children, their children's children, all the way up until us, right?

And we have all sinned and we know that in ourselves, and so we will die.

And look, that's true.

That's a true thing.

Paul says this elsewhere.

He actually says it earlier in this letter.

For all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

No one seeks for God, none is righteous, no, not even one.

Your mouths are open, graves.

Congratulations.

I hope you enjoy your Sunday scaries.

That's this is a real biblical truth, right?

That we all sin, and therefore we all die.

But that's not what Paul's saying here.

That's not the truth that he's communicating here.

What he's saying, and you can tell because of the way that he moves through these next verses, he's saying that even those who didn't sin in the way that Adam sinned, they still died.

Even during that time where there wasn't a law that was revealed, that time from Adam until Moses, and Moses is when the law was revealed.

Even in that time, everyone still died.

So he's clarifying the sentence that he said in the beginning, because what he's saying is that when he says, sin came into the world through one man, and so death spread to men because all sinned, the all sinned and the one sin in Adam, follow me here, are the same sin.

Somehow it can be referred to the singular sin of Adam, the yeah, Eve, that does look good.

I'll take a bite.

That sin was yours.

That means, because he did that, that means you did that.

So now you die.

Now, to our type of culture, that feels like, well, that's not fair.

I didn't do that.

Well, you don't understand the type of thing that you are.

You come from somewhere.

You have a history.

You no more cho you no more chose to be a part of that sin than you chose to be born, and check it out.

Here you are.

You are united to Adam.

So that his sin, when he sinned there, that was yours.

This is a story about solidarity.

John Murray is a theologian from the last century, and when you want to read something pretty, don't read John Murray.

But when you need some exegesis, he's the guy to go to.

He says this for these reasons, we must conclude that the all sinned and the one trespass of the one man must refer to the same fact or event, that the one fact can be expressed in terms of both singularity and plurality, as the sin of one and the sin of all.

And the only solution is that there must be some kind of solidarity existing between the one and the all, with the result that the sin of the one may at the same time and with equal relevance be regarded as the sin of all.

This is huge, this point that Paul is making.

Because what you should realize is just how trapped you are.

You're born guilty.

The type of thing you are.

When the church talks about the doctrine of original sin, this is what we're talking about.

We're born in Adam, the first man, the representative of all humanity.

And this explains just there the very type of thing that Adam was.

Adam is the head of humanity.

He's the one through whom we all come.

He's the source, and so we are in kind with him.

He is our representative.

This is now what we're like.

Because when he was standing there, we were in him.

And now we still are.

So that that sin is ours.

So we all die in it.

I've been struggling with ways to make this tangible because it can feel so distant, this idea that like you are connected.

Uh you're you're you're genetically connected to this original sin.

Uh so 23andMe is helpful.

Another thing to consider, just so just so we can break out of this normal way that we see ourselves as just these individuals, these atomized, ahistorical types of creatures.

Uh so one thing that uh I'll do when when I do premarital counseling, uh, is we'll do just like a Bible study through uh from Genesis to Revelation, and we'll look at how the Bible describes marriage.

And so we'll start in Genesis 1 with Adam and Eve, and uh then move into Genesis 2, see them brought together, and in Genesis 3 we'll see how their marriage falls apart.

And what we what we're looking at when we see that is the the history of our parents' sins.

And this happens almost every time.

I'll be going through this with a couple, and we'll see, look at the way that Adam and Eve sin against each other.

Uh do you see how Adam passively removed himself?

And do you see how Eve was taken advantage of, but Adam did nothing to protect her?

And do you see how Eve offers this dangerous thing and how they immediately turn on each other when their sin is exposed?

And the curse is that Eve's desire will be for her husband, like sin desires us, and Adam will just want to rule over her in a domineering way.

So we'll establish that, and we'll say, okay, this is like what the sin of our parents is like.

Now tell me about the sin in your parents' marriage.

And almost every time they'll say, Oh, I I thought these things that I saw in my parents' marriage, I thought those were just like particular to them.

I thought like those breakdowns, I thought my dad's passivity and my mom's domineering, I thought that was just kind of their thing.

But it's like, no, it's not just their thing.

This is the way relationships break down because those may have been your parents, but these are your parents.

See, Adam and Eve, they're your parents.

And then we say, okay, by the way, this is where your relationship is going to break down.

Because your model for marriage was a sinful model for marriage.

And then we move to the Jesus part.

But do you see how we're not disconnected?

In the same way that our parents' sin, you know, we interact with it.

That's because we're that's all we're doing.

In marriage, it's just easy and helpful to see and important to see lucidly because you'll have the same.

We're connected creatures.

So, this understanding of our solidarity with Adam, of Adam as the head of humanity, this is all tee up for what Paul's doing.

He's describing just how dangerous our situation is and what type of salvation we need.

And we need a new first human.

We need a new representative, someone who could actually save us.

And so this is where Paul moves to next.

In Romans 5, 15, he says, but the free gift is not like the trespass.

For if many died through one man's trespass, much more have the grace of God and the free gift, by the grace of that one man, Jesus Christ, abounded for many.

See, this is all set up because Jesus is the second Adam.

Jesus is the new man.

And in the same way that Adam's one trespass moves into all humanity, so Jesus' act of righteousness saves all who would come to him.

Paul continues, Romans 5, 16 to 17, and the free gift is not like the result of that one man's sin.

For the judgment following one trespass brought condemnation.

But the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

For if because of one man's trespass death reigned through that one man, much more will those who receive the abundance of grace and the free gift of righteousness reign in life through the one man, Jesus Christ.

Paul is drawing parallels.

These parallel lines says there's Adam, who we are born in, we are heirs of.

And Adam's sin led to condemnation, which led to death.

But then there's Jesus.

And Jesus's righteousness leads to our justification and life.

They're perfectly suited to each other, perfect opposites at every point.

Where there's sin, Jesus has righteousness.

Where there's condemnation in Adam, Jesus offers justification.

Where there's death in Adam, in Christ, there is life, because Jesus is the new Adam.

So do you see the way that we are so deeply identified with Adam?

Such that the sin that he did, Paul is able to say, that that's all sinned.

When Adam sinned there, that's all sinned.

It's the same action.

This is the gospel.

When Jesus was righteous there, all who are in him.

That's our righteousness.

That's yours.

That's the gospel.

It is not that Jesus did good things and had leftover merits for you.

It's a completely different story.

It's that in Jesus' acts of righteousness, you were righteous.

That's the gospel.

In Christ alone.

Consider the parallels.

There are only two people in human history that could say directly God was their direct father.

Right?

There's no other human lineage that could be pointed to.

It was just God made them.

That was Adam, and then that was Jesus.

Why did Jesus need to be born of a virgin?

Why could he not have come from this lineage of Adam?

Why could he not have been in Adam?

Because we needed the type of thing that could save us.

They're both tempted in a garden.

And Adam, when he's tempted in the garden, the snake comes in, deceives his wife, and tempts Adam, and Adam falls to the temptation.

Because you know what Adam should have done?

When the snake was tempting, was deceiving Eve, and Adam is standing right here, like, well, I don't know, maybe hear him out.

You know what Adam should have done?

He should have killed the snake.

You know what Jesus did?

He crushed the serpent's head.

We had a new Adam, a new representative of humanity.

Who instead of abdicating his responsibility for his bride and cursing his whole lineage, he takes responsibility for his bride, he crushes the, you know, it's the story of the Bible.

You kill the dragon, get the girl.

He crushes the serpent, he saves his bride.

But it's greater than that.

It's even more than that because the the sin is, excuse me, the justification is greater than the condemnation.

The righteousness is better than the sin.

The free gift is better than the wages of sin.

And that's because the free gift covers all of our sin.

It says that there are it, but the free gift following many trespasses brought justification.

Because look at where we are in history now.

It was that one sin is all sinned, but now we see it is really all sinned.

And it is Jesus as the representative of a new humanity that rescues us.

And we are joined to him by faith alone.

So when you see the righteousness of Christ, the gospel is that's your righteousness.

You say, Well, how can that be?

What did I do?

What did I do to earn that?

You didn't.

You didn't.

The good news is that Jesus really saves.

That he took on the payment of the sin in the world, that when we needed someone to stand in solidarity with us, he did.

And that meant him dying and then us receiving his life, his righteousness.

It's ours.

When you understand the type of thing that you are, the type of creature that you are, the type of salvation that you require, then Christ alone is obvious.

What else could it be?

What else could possibly save me?

What could bring me into the joy of the blessed Trinity, the happy God, this thing that I was made for?

Martin Luther says I could I could starve myself from fasting.

He says I did permanent damage to he did permanent damage to himself physically from his fasting.

And it wasn't enough to try and get into this blessed trinity.

But in Christ, by the free gift of just receiving him as our head and Lord, coming to him in faith.

See that Christ alone is obvious.

It's obvious.

There's nothing else.

There's no one else we can turn to.

And if we try and turn to anyone else, if we try and create our own justification in any way, in anything other than Christ, you're just misunderstanding how bad things really are.

You're the type of creature who's stuck in sin unless a savior comes.

A savior has come.

It is Jesus.

So Christ alone.

I want this to be like a balm for your soul.

Move from being in Adam.

Be in Christ by faith.

When Satan comes and accuses you and said, But look at the type of thing that you are.

You say, but I'm not in Adam.

If anyone's in Christ, he's a new creation.

The old thing's gone.

New behold, new things have come.

Why does the Bible use language like that?

Because you're in Christ.

His righteousness is yours.

It's really, really good news.

It's really good news.

Alright.

With that, are our questions working this week?

They are.

Okay, so let's take a question.

Did God see Cain and Abel as being of the same sin as they both came from Adam, or did God see Cain as having an increased sin because of the greater evil on his heart?

So the answer is both.

So just as we saw, Paul is saying that in his sin, in Adam's sin, all sinned.

And so there is a sense in which Adam's sin is Cain's sin.

But the Bible also teaches that all have sinned and fall short of the glory of God.

And so sin in our hearts and as things go on is increasing.

So it's not like all of our sins that we commit, it's not like those are like fake now, right?

Like, well, those are really it's just one sin because it's just in Adam.

No, those were real.

Our sins, like those sins that you do, really happened.

And God's not like, oh, that didn't, you know, that was some fake thing, it's just in Adam.

No.

So then the question is, oh so these generations go by, and sin just keeps increasing.

And then God provides the law, and what do you think the reason for the law is?

Is it because sin keeps increasing and so we need to restrain it?

So God's like, okay, I'm gonna give you the law as a way to restrain the sin that just keeps seeming to abound in the world.

Is that why God sent the law?

No, it's the opposite.

God sent the law, so that sin would increase.

Why?

Because where the sin abounded, grace could abound all the more.

So that the glory of God in the gospel might be demonstrated in countless particular sins.

And so we would stand beneath him and we would say, look at the glory of your grace.

It is more unimaginable than I possibly could have fathomed.

My only hope, my only hope in life and in death is in you, God.

And so we stand before him, glorying in the free salvation that he offers, and he receives 100% of the glory.

So great question.

Uh the answer is both.

So if you have any other questions, uh be standing down here at the end uh and would love to pray with you or talk through these things further.

Now we'll move into a celebration of what that righteous act of Christ was, which is his blood that was poured out in payment for our sin, his body that was broken.

And we come to the table to say publicly that by faith I'm in Christ, and that by trusting in his salvation alone, I can stand in his righteousness before God unashamed.

So let's come to the table today to celebrate that.

Father, I pray that you would move in our hearts.

I pray that you would show us just a clarity of the gospel.

Would you work this into our souls?

Give us a new depth of assurance in you that we might see in the way that Paul intended, in the way that you intended by your spirit, speaking through Paul, we might see the mechanism, the clarity that he desired us to see of why we needed such a one as Christ, and why to turn to anything else for our salvation is just foolish once we know the types of creatures we are.

Lord, we praise you for the love that you've shown us by giving us your Son that we might see you and your blessed Trinity.

Lift us up in Jesus' name.

Amen.